


But My Wrath Will Come Down Like the Cold Rain

by Mamcine_Oxfeather



Category: Two Step - Fandom
Genre: M/M, fight me, hashtagaloneinmysin, omfg somebody else please watch this movie, that's right zombie apocalypse AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-18
Updated: 2016-07-20
Packaged: 2018-07-25 15:31:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7538185
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mamcine_Oxfeather/pseuds/Mamcine_Oxfeather
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Now I don't take pleasure in a man's pain<br/>But my wrath will come down like the cold rain</p><p>You better call the police, call the coroner<br/>Call up your priest, I gotta warn ya<br/>There'll be no peace, when I find the fool<br/>Who did that to you</p><p>-John Legend</p>
            </blockquote>





	But My Wrath Will Come Down Like the Cold Rain

The attorney's life toppled from his split head like a clutch of baby's breath from a water-heavy vase, quivering and fragrant.  
  
James gagged against the duct tape pressing his wet face shut, hugging himself back against the kitchen chair as if it could ease his terror, his revulsion, with its creaking piss-stained embrace.  
  
Webb rounded on the room, eyes wide.  "Shit," he swore softly, expression trembling, white.  "This is bad.  Oh, we're in trouble, go _dammit_ , Jimmy, we're for it now."  His sharp teeth flash, an embarrassed chuckle under wide eyes.  He smooths a hand over his freshly shaven jaw, fingers stretched long across his mouth as he contemplates the pooling blood, shock traded over for the mercurial introspection of a veteran hot-head (cooled by middle-age into a villainous grace but no less abrupt).  "Who was he?" Webb demands quietly, anger lurking like a gator under shift-easy algae.  "Why didn't you tell me," Webb begins to pace, a single step back and forth, chuckling exasperated, feigning scorn, "That you were 'specting company?  Hey?"  
  
Webb crouches in front of James, between his legs to knife the tape that pinned his ankles to the chair.  He clucks his tongue, looking up from the slicked fringe of blonde hair falling into his narrow eyes.  "That's a bad turn you did your old friend over there, letting him startle me like that."  Webb stands, wagging the butt-end of his pocket knife.  "Now we gotta take this show on the road.  Hit up every ATM from here to Canada."  Webb cheerfully kicks the chair out from under James' weight, furniture and captive toppling sidelong to the linoleum with a grunt and a thud apiece.

James clamps his gummed eyes shut as the tape is peeled carefully from his mouth, nostrils working in terror as his lungs billow air past a silent sob, wrists and shoulders aching sharply where they resist the stiff angle of the chair.

Webb grumbles on as he works, taking his time, stepping back to consider and reconsider, crouching again in a sudden fit of sympathy, standing again in a sudden fit of resolution.  "I'm a good guy," Webb pleads in his nasal southern drawl as he folds the wet tape carefully over James' mouth again, undecided as to the level of freedom required and the level of trust in James not to holler his guts out (figuratively, and perhaps literally should Webb's wrath be pricked by the disobedience).  "I promised not ta kill ya if and when you gave up your PIN, and you did, and I thank you for that, really honest I do, and I kept my word, but, Jimbo, lissen, buddy -"  Webb scoffs, finally knifing the tape free of James' shoulders, catching little snags in the loose black thermal sleeves, "I leave you here and a day or two goes by and I only get, what, nine-hundred a day from your account?  And you go free or getcherself dead and gone, call the cops, cancel the account access," a low whistle, Webb shaking his head.  "Cain't have that.  So we're gonna get you upright, get you cleaned up and presentable and into that car.  Just you and me and the Oh-Six Motel,  
  
"Shit," Webb rubs his face, another idea dawning.  "Cops find this guy, they'll put a freeze on your accounts.  Shit, shit  _shit_ -" Webb kicks over the trashcan, breath hissing.  "We are in a real bind here, buddy," Webb warbles, laughter breathy, bony shoulders haunched in frustration.  
  
James follows the track of Webb's snakeskin boots.  James quietly overturns his whirring panic, working his fingers open and closed to restore the stiff bite of life.  He croaks through the loose wrap of duct tape, coughing at the rubbery taste.

"You got something to contribute?" Webb bends at the waist, peeling the tape off once again.  "Because right now, man -  _man_ \- this is not looking so hot for us.  For you."  A sharp bark of laughter, "At best, we're gonna see identity theft.  At worst, I shit-kick you until you authorize a phone transfer.  Wire me a fuckin' traveler's check for ten goddamn lousy thousand dollars -"

"You don't have a bank account," James asks quietly, peering up through one swollen eye and a blood-cured clump of curling black hair.  "You need me alive."  His legs cycle weakly, testing out their restored pulse.  A shaky, bracing breath, the hard edge of intelligence flickering behind dark eyes.  "It's not your fault my Gran's attorney is dead.  I should have told you who-all might drop by.  I'm sorry."  Meeting Webb's eyes, with some effort, voice spun thin from disuse and stress, "I'm sorry this happened to you."  Bleeding on the floor two steps from a murdered friend, James apologizes to the hair-trigger psychopath in his grandma's kitchen.

There is a weighted silence as James holds eye contact, chapped lips pressing shut around his own social discomfort.  Finally, Webb draws in a deep breath through his wolfish nose, drops his gaze to the floor, foot wagging in a guilty fidget.  "He  _was_ pretty old, so, I guess it's fine," Webb excuses himself, incapable of responsibility but compensated by trailer-park charm, as much a celebrant of James' cooperation as he was.  "And _of course_ i need you alive, dummy," Webb shifts his crossed arms to plant fists on his narrow hips, neck craning to regard his captive, accent gone thick and teasing.  "I also already said I wunnit gonna kill you, _gatdayum_."  He flicks a hand forward, up.  "Gitcher ass up off that floor, now," The duct tape is plucked from the counter, spun, a new strip loosed, "I gotta secure you front-ways so you can wash up."  Muttering, "Look like a bare-knuckle underground, goddamn illegal cage fighter.  Get us pulled over by a good goddamn samaritan trying to point our way to a hospital or some shit. Cops at you like flies to a turd, lookin', battered-ass-wife lookin' _chile_."  Another chuckle, reproachful.  
  
James bites back a moan, limbs fishing slowly forward, stomach cramped and head swimming.  "You could just carry me," he jokes dryly, lip stung around a self-damning smirk.  "Since we're going along with the married theme."  He manages to roll to his elbows and knees, clothes hanging sweat-limp and baggy off his shaking frame, forcing breath past the nausea.  "Motel honeymoon and everything."  James bites a tacky crumb of blood from his lip and spits, wobbling to a stand with the support of the stove, meeting Webb's unimpressed laconia with a shivering attempt at another grin.  "You'll even make away with half of what I own in the divorce."  
  
Webb... doesn't seem sure of how to respond, caught between incredulity, scorn, and regular jackass confusion.  James counts that as a victory, a step toward humanizing himself in Webb's eyes, to better build on the deception of his flattery.  Criminal minds could be clever, sure, but usually the sociopathy stunted other perceptions - and by the flattering cling of Webb's bootcut jeans and the high shine on his belt buckle, narcissism was his flavor of weakness.  James had plenty of practice pandering to bullies and to those who considered themselves above reproach, and often these were the same sort, and they never grew out of their craving for approval, praise.  
  
James had answered the door, yesterday.  He hadn't called the cops or snapped a phone pic through the window or hid behind the curtains to try and get a license plate, no.  He had answered the door, and spoken to the con-artist directly, and nearly - very, very nearly - invited the stranger right on in.  But James was a young spider yet and this wasp, tall and pointy and yellow and black, had seen his hesitation and kicked his web clean in and stung him badly.    
  
James had now been freed from his paralysis, and the same drive that had willed its fingers one by one around the front door handle yesterday remained bright and hot and thunderous within him, a heartbeat in itself.  This drive, this dark seething thing unique to the stifled arrogance of any maladjusted introvert, settled into the line of James' shoulders like whiskey cloaking first-date tension.

Webb blinks.  "No, uh.  Pretty sure I'll take all of it, shitbrain."  The insult lacks heat, nearly fond.  "But you go ahead and be a faggot on top of everything else wrong with your sad sorry bee-hind.  Tis the product of your times, right?  Let that freak flag fly, go on."  He squares his feet and draws a circle in the air with a blood-smeared fingertip.  "Now putcher floppy wrists together, or I break your arm."

James had opened the door yesterday and Webb, foolhardy in his greed, had kicked right on through.


End file.
